


A Final Resting Place

by JustOnlyGinger



Series: The Man and the Mare [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Death, Extremely Dubious Consent, M/M, Mild Corpse Desecration, Necrophilia, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2018-12-11 07:43:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11709936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustOnlyGinger/pseuds/JustOnlyGinger
Summary: Niles and Dane bond over Ivy's corpse. Or something.





	1. Chapter 1

In truth, Niles had expected never to see Ivy again, after he was sold to that rancher out West, the one who simply had to acquire him for his collection of remarkable and well-bred studs. Niles had supposed neither he nor Ivy would ever return to the town where they had first met, but here he is in the chilly little cellar beneath the village church, and here before him on a waist-high granite slab is the cold and gently decomposing body that once held the unique and indomitable spirit of the young man he had loved. Here as well is the pastor, a drab but eloquent little man with a reassuring manner and a vinegar-soaked rag tied over his mouth and nose.

“It's a pity that there's no one else to claim him,” Niles says, and the pastor nods solemnly. “He was very well-liked, you know. He had a home- a mother-- a kind mistress who cherished him as anyone would cherish such a fine possession. She's long dead now, poor lady, her estate parceled off to relatives all over the continent, but... dear me, Ivy, I would have thought there'd be someone here to take charge of you.” Niles smoothes Ivy's hair away from his face, exactly as he had on that first night they spent together, when he'd taken the boy into his bed. Remarkably little has changed, though Ivy's face now is rigid and bloodless, with a pained expression he'd seldom worn in life. His eyes are visibly sunken beneath their closed lids, his desiccated lips peeled away from his teeth.

“There was someone here,” the pastor says, in a tone not unlike someone remembering a dream. “A lad with red hair. He said he'd return once he raised enough money for a proper burial, but you know these people seldom keep their word.”

“Don't fret about this one. I'll look after him. I'll take up your post for tonight and keep watch over his body.”

“I don't think you ought to--”

“I'll pay handsomely for the privilege. That on top of the funeral costs, a fine slave like Camille's Ivy ought to have a proper sendoff.” The pastor still looks hesitant, and also as if he's looking for a hasty route of escape, should Niles' strange proclivities move him to violence. “Go on, Padre. I'm sure you've other business to attend to. There's no one else here, after all. We'll stay, just the two of us, resting side by side, as in happier times...” Niles produces a half dozen silver dollar coins from the pouch he keeps hidden under his shirt, and the little pastor snatches them up and scurries back up the stairs; his queer flat-heeled shoes can be heard scuffling and thumping overhead, and then abruptly Niles is alone in the silence and near-darkness of the hasty makeshift morgue with a scattering of half-carved headstones and a workbench covered with mason's tools and Ivy laid out on his bier, a candle stub burning in a ceramic butter dish beside him.

“You know, in spite of everything, it really is lovely to see you again.” Niles sits down on the slab of stone, draws his legs up and crosses his ankles over each other, finding there's more than enough room to make himself comfortable. “I'm glad that your redheaded friend didn't have the funds to bury you, though I doubt he ever would have guessed I would be in the right place at the right time to claim your body. A happy accident, wasn't it?” No answer, as he might have expected, but in the silence he hears Ivy's habitual and powerful silences, his reluctance to speak when nothing needed to be said.

“You've not been dead so very long, have you? That fellow was rude, wearing the vinegar rag over his face. You don't smell so much of rot. Not yet.” Niles breathes deeply of the lingering scent of vinegar, faint tinges of candle wax, a vague suggestion of mustiness and rot and mold but none of the stench he's come to expect from a decomposing corpse. Ivy's chill flesh is intact, firm to the touch, fresh and healthful as a beef loin laid out on the butcher's counter.

“I do somewhat wish you could speak to me. Tell me how you came to this, though I suppose it doesn't matter, really. How very often I've longed to see you, how much I've missed your touch, your looks, your voice... if I should live to be a thousand years old I'd never forget those nights we spent together, how shy you were at first, just a lad of eighteen but not so gangling or awkward as you might have been, no, you were already as graceful as a wild creature. Like the mountain cat that lives in the white stone cliffs, far to the north, remember how I told you I had seen him there? Long long ago, when I was a boy, and you're the only other creature that's ever come close to being so beautiful.” Niles touches Ivy's hip, feels the strange coldness of recently-living skin, finds as always that it fascinates him. He desires at once to feel it against his own, over the entire length of his body, and he hastily opens his coat and shirt and trousers and lies down at Ivy's side. The granite slab chills him dully, but Ivy's skin warms and softens ever so slightly with his touch.

“I would say I can't bear to see you like this, but I could bear even less to live my life out without ever seeing you again. Come to that, I don't suppose I have much time left myself, but I'll take what strength and solace I can from this last embrace. And if you can still be comforted, cold as you are, if it means anything at all that you won't have to sleep alone tonight...” Niles presses a kiss to Ivy's neck, where the great veins and arteries that once beat with life are still, where the blood has cooled and congealed beneath the skin. It was these pathways that once received the embalmer's stents and needles, where poison streamed in and blood leached out, but Ivy will never be desecrated like this. He'll be buried intact, Niles will see to that. All of him, except perhaps for a lock of his splendid dark hair.

“What's this?” Resting his arm across Ivy's chest, Niles encounters something unexpected: a strange bony wingtip where his left arm used to be, flesh long since grown firm and smooth over the site of the amputation. His weak eyesight hadn't registered this subtle deformity, had shown him Ivy's body as he'd expected to see it, as it was when he'd seen it last, all four limbs quite firmly attached. “What's happened to you? You've left an arm behind somewhere.” Niles carefully palpates the forlorn stump, as gentle as if Ivy could still feel his fingers stroking and pressing.

“You poor thing. I suppose you'll never be whole again now. Not until our Mother calls us to our final judgment. I should like to be there with you, I could vouch for your character. Not that I believe for a moment that She would condemn you, as perhaps I deserve to be condemned.” Niles takes hold of Ivy's good right hand and presses it between his legs, parts the lips of his cunt with Ivy's cold fingers. A shiver runs through him at the sensation, the numbing chill of the stone slab beneath his body, his clothes half shed, Ivy's stonily inert flesh like sculptured ice against his bare skin. He catches his breath, closes his eyes, begins to rub himself on the stiff fingers as he nuzzles Ivy's neck, the place where his pulse no longer beats. He shivers and groans, his tits pressed to Ivy's side, his nipples stiff and shrinking from the cold.

“That's lovely, you know. You know just how to touch me, how to make me come, if only I could return the favor one last time...” Niles kisses Ivy's snarling mouth, licks at his bared teeth, tastes the mustiness of death and the faint sweet savor of blood. “If only you could fuck me again, fill my cunt with your seed, fuck me deep and fill me up, oh-- oh Mother, oh my Ivy...” Just as Niles comes, he's suddenly aware of another presence in the room, approaching from the base of the stairs; not the pastor but someone slimmer and more graceful, barefoot or else very softly shod for his footsteps make no noise. Niles turns away from Ivy, gathers his coat decorously around himself and lies as still as if he were another corpse.

“Who's here?” a voice calls out; yelps, really, quavering with false bravado. “I can hear you breathing. I know there's someone here.” In the light of a bobbing candle flame Niles catches sight of a face, young and pale and terrified and overgrown with fine red hair. This must be the boy the pastor had spoken of, the one who came to fetch Ivy's body.

“Don't be afraid,” Niles calls out to him, and the candle nearly falls from his shaking hands.

“Who said that? Who are you?”

“I knew Ivy. His mistress was my friend.”

“What in all the sawtoothed mouths of hell are you doing down here?” The boy's voice is an angry hiss, but he has the presence of mind to set his candle down on Ivy's slab beside the one in the butter dish, which is close to burning out. Niles levers himself upright, covertly hitching up his trousers, the afterglow of his orgasm still spreading through him; he's gloriously warm, warm to the tips of his fingers and ears, and inclined to be generous in dealing with his rival.

“I'm keeping him company. It must be so awfully dreary, being all alone in this depressing basement.”

“He shouldn't be here. He should have been buried.”

“So I hear, but you haven't the funds to secure a proper resting place for him.”

“Who told you that? Who are you, anyway?”

“Never mind. I knew Camille, and I knew Ivy when he was a colt, well before you were born, by the looks of it. Why don't you come here and lie down with us, and in the morning we can discuss the arrangements. A funeral, a plot, a headstone, all of that.” Niles indicates the space on Ivy's other side, and the red-haired boy approaches cautiously, as if unsure that all of this isn't some wicked mirage, some vision of hell sent to torment him. He hoists himself onto the slab and stretches out next to Ivy, keeping a prudent distance; unwilling to touch him as Niles has, superstitiously fearful of the body in its harmless sleep.

“Don't be afraid to touch him. He hasn't changed.”

“He's dead.”

“Death is nothing but the leave-taking of the spirit. What's left behind remains the same. It won't hurt you.” Niles closes his eyes, and the boy is silent for a long time. Then he begins to cry, long ragged sobs torn abruptly from his throat, and when Niles looks again the boy is embracing Ivy's body, pressing his face into the hollow between neck and shoulder, wetting the bloodless skin with his tears.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Like having your necrophilia and eating it too.

Niles realizes he must've fallen asleep at some point, he's waking up now and the hollowed-out room under the church is silent and pitch-black but he can feel the reassuring solidity of Ivy's body still beside him, Ivy of course hasn't gone anywhere, at least the part of him that remains here, that can be seen and touched and known. His spirit has flown off to be with the Mother of All Things, and now he gazes with new eyes on Her glorious plumage, the indescribable light of the one who carries the world beneath her wings.

He hears the even peaceful breathing of a sleeping presence nearby; the redheaded boy, still stretched out on Ivy's other side, and Niles reaches out and touches his shoulder, feels the living warmth of his skin through the thin stuff of his shirt. Who is he, anyway, this boy, how did he come to be here, who is he to weep over Ivy's lifeless body, to wash Ivy's sleeping face with his tears? In spite of himself, Niles is overcome with curiosity.

“Boy. Wake up, come on now, there's a good lad...” Niles shakes the bony shoulder, and the boy snorts and groans himself awake, yawns and then falls very swiftly silent, as if realizing where he is.

“I can't believe I fell asleep.”

“It's all right. He knows we're here with him. This is the most important time, you know, the first few days after death. The body must be accompanied, so the deceased can be assured of his importance to the living. Ivy knows he was loved in life, and now that he's dead we must carry on loving him. In the old days, you know, less enlightened times, it was believed that standing watch over the corpse kept the spirit from reentering it, which obviously would have resulted in disaster.”

“I still don't think I know who you are.”

“I might say the same of you, boy.”

“I'm Dane Morrison. I was free once, but when I met Ivy I was a slave with no master. Discarded, being whored out from some basement brothel. Pennies for a fuck, that was how we lived for a while. Then a man who had known his old mistress bought up the both of us, and a broodmare who was imprisoned there as well. The three of us, we lived well enough with the old man, the master, who turned out to be the one who'd sired Ivy. He tried to fuck Ivy and I killed him.”

“You killed your master?”

“He was worth very little as a master. All he wanted was to make us miserable, to torment Ivy by torturing his broodmare. The broodmare, Charlie, Ivy was fond of him. They loved each other, and I lay with them at night, and that was enough. For a long time.”

“Well. You've certainly had some adventures since I last saw you.” Niles pats Ivy's shoulder, to make it clear who he's talking to, and Dane continues to look askance at him. Dane clearly finds him strange, doesn't approve of his free ways with the bodies of the dead, but Niles knows it's only practical to treat corpses this way, to handle them fearlessly, to wash and dress and touch them and keep them company until it's time for them to return to the earth.

“This broodmare, where is she?”

“He. His name is Charlie.”

“Curious.” Niles is surprised and a bit touched that the great love of Ivy's life possesses the same peculiarity that he'd introduced Ivy to long ago, when he was little more than a foal, still sleeping on a straw mat on his mistress' hearth, when Cinnamon and Camille were still alive and Niles himself was relatively young and pretty. Goodness knows nobody could possibly want him now, and the thought makes him a bit gloomy.

“Indeed... so, where is he now?”

“I don't know. We were all three of us captured and punished for killing our master, and we never saw him after that. Or the child he bore for Ivy, either.”

“Of course. You were a fine stud in your day, weren't you? Could put a foal in just about any mare, one shot, first try, easy as anything.” Niles is absently stroking Ivy's arm, and Dane is still looking at him as if he's about the strangest creature he's ever seen. “We'll find your mare for you, my poor boy. You truly loved him, didn't you?”

“They were very fond of each other.”

“And of you as well, I suppose. You're a lucky fellow. I would have liked to keep Ivy for myself, you know, I had such fun with him when he was a lad, but I couldn't offer as much for him as he was worth, and Camille sold him to a wealthy landowner. Far to the west, in the Green Hill Kingdom. I never thought I would see him again, as long as I lived.” Dane is quiet, eyes cast down, looking hollow-cheeked and sad, and Niles places a hand on his shoulder again, very lightly, feels him shiver at the touch.

“It was lovely, how you wept for him. I'm sure it would have gladdened his heart to hear it. For a man to be loved so, in his life... truly something to aspire to, isn't it?”

“I did love him.”

“There's a story I once heard, about a man from the south, a magician of sorts, who played a fabulous stringed instrument and roamed from town to town, whom people followed as if he were the Pied Piper, who accumulated devotees the way dogs accumulate fleas. He died far from home, this great man, and no sooner did he draw his final breath than his acolytes fell upon him and stripped his corpse of clothing and talismans, and they went on to strip the skin from his flesh and the flesh from his bones. They tore him to pieces, and each bore their prize away and built a shrine around it and now he lives in a thousand churches in a hundred kingdoms, and those who loved him know he'll never be forgotten.”

“So? Are you saying we should tear him to pieces?”

“No, never. Only that love takes many strange forms, and no man dies if he is remembered with fondness by those he left behind.” Dane nods, solemnly, and there's silence for a while, silence that Niles doesn't mind embracing, the still underground air cold against his skin, his body still shuddering with the memory of Ivy's, corpse flesh and living flesh pressed together until there remained no distinction between the two. There's a faint smell of candle wax, and stone dust, and Niles tries to remember what Ivy smelled like when he was alive, when the two of them lay together. It seems to him that it was something like hay or grass, a sweet peaceful smell of vegetation, growing and drying in the sun.

“So what are we going to do now? It's nearly morning.”

“Why such haste? We still have time to dream awhile. To remember, to witness, to prove our love. You... you wouldn't happen to know how he died, would you?”

“It was his bad wind. He couldn't breathe. We were together for a long time, in the harem of the Lord Regent, and he looked after us well enough, but one night Ivy went to sleep and didn't wake up. The doctor said it was because his throat closed and his breathing stopped. There was nothing anyone could have done.” Dane's sitting up now, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees, looking very pensive and pretty in the dim light filtering down through the tiny windows set high in the walls of the basement. Niles wants to touch him again, to comfort him; and what if they both could comfort each other, both of them after all having loved the same man through different years of his life.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You're a fine-looking lad. I can see what Ivy saw in you.”

“I don't know what he saw in me. I'm nothing much to look at. When I first met him he was none too taken with me. I was too young to interest him, but...”

“He warmed to you. I can see why.” Niles touches Dane's cheek, feels the downy brush of his hair, the fine light covering that isn't really much of a beard. He leans closer, and Dane reaches out with both hands, places them on Niles' shoulders, breathes deeply like he's bracing himself for some sort of impact, like he's about to suffer great pain.

“He survived so many things. And now...”

“He did. You should be happy for him, rejoice in knowing that you made him happy, that the years of his life were short but blessed.”

“You don't know that. You don't have any idea who I am.”

“I know well enough. I can see, can't I?” Niles kisses Dane's mouth, which is red and raw and dry and opened slightly in surprise, and Dane yelps but doesn't pull away from him.

They sport for a while in this fashion, long enough for Dane's prick to become hard, and for Niles to ascertain that he's been castrated; a discovery that throws him briefly off-balance, sparks in him an instinctive revulsion for the barbaric ritual that's been perpetrated on Dane's inoffensive young body. It's at this inopportune moment, while he's lying there with his clothes disarranged and his hand down the trousers of a man he hardly knows, that someone else- again, not the parson-- enters the room on heavy booted feet.

“Away with you, buzzards,” says a damnably familiar voice. “Go pick at some other pile of bones. I've got a prior claim on this one.”

“Nathan Everett, as I live and breathe.”

“Niles Ayer. There you are making an indecent spectacle of yourself, as always.” Everett approaches, candle held aloft, and Dane appears to have recognized him as well, is gaping at him with openmouthed astonishment as if his sudden appearance is too miraculous and terrible to be borne.

“Not really a spectacle if hardly anyone's around to see it,” Niles says, sitting upright and buttoning up his jacket. “At any rate, I've promised young Ivy here a proper wake and a decent funeral. I witnessed his birth, you know, it's only fitting that I lay him to rest as well. Hard as it is that it's come to this, we all might have wished it were otherwise, but don't the good tend to die young while creatures like us go on living?”

“No need to trouble yourself. He belongs to me. I'll bear the funeral costs.”

“Not so, not so.” Niles stands up, angling his body between Everett and the granite plinth where Ivy lies in state; his response, if he could hear them arguing over him like this, would be much the same as the stony indifference of his corpse. “You forfeited your claim to him. He belongs to the Grand Regent now, but do you suppose His Highness will care for him as he deserves?”

“King Andrew would provide for him. If he knew he was here.” Dane seems almost frozen in place, his eyes wide and fixed, his hands trembling ever so slightly where he holds them clasped in front of him. Everett considers him as if he's hardly worth bothering with, a minor annoyance that must nevertheless be dealt with before it becomes a nuisance.

“Stupid boy. Do you suppose the Regent doesn't know what's become of him? That this isn't his doing in the first place?” Dane draws himself up to his full height, seems about to reply scathingly, but before he can say a word something genuinely astounding happens. Ivy sits up on his slab, turns to one side and vomits onto the floor, clutching his chest and shuddering, and Niles hears him panting and gasping for breath, his pained groans and the chattering of his teeth as he twitches and shivers, now lying on his side, miserable and hypothermic but obviously and gloriously alive.

Dane's gone white and wide-eyed with shock again, and when Niles glances around for Everett he seems at first to have disappeared. Then Niles realizes he's fallen to the floor, is as stiff and inert as Ivy had appeared to be; the difference being that of course no one will weep for him.

“Claws and teeth of the Mother,” Dane utters, almost soundlessly. Niles is enraged and relieved in equal measure, longs to beat that stunned look off the boy's face, can't keep himself from cuffing him hard on the side of the head.

“Claws and teeth indeed! You absolute idiot! How could you have been so certain he was dead? How can you lie on someone's heart and weep without realizing it's still beating? Mother of mothers, how could you be so stupid?”

“He was dead. He stopped breathing.”

“Clearly he couldn't have. And what sort of imbecile condemns a living man to this-- this purgatorial--” Ivy interrupts his ranting by throwing up again, and Niles leaps on him and embraces him, feels the same chill, the clamminess of his skin, not quite as cold as the stone itself but colder certainly than any creature with a beating heart should be.

“Ivy, my dear, my sweet, my darling Ivy--” Unfathomably, Dane's pulling at Niles' jacket, trying to get his attention. Ivy appears not to know either of them, and Mother but he does look ill, all sunken-eyed and pale, streaks of bloody black vomit at the corners of his mouth, which is moving as if he's trying to say something and Niles wants desperately to know what it is but Dane refuses to leave him be.

“What now?”

“Everett. His clothes.” Niles gets the sense of it immediately, feels very little remorse as he and Dane strip old Nathan of his coat and vest and trousers and everything and do the best they can to bundle Ivy in the borrowed garments, much too small but with the great fur cloak over everything they ought to get away with it. Leaving Everett on the floor, shoring Ivy up between them, they make their way up the stairs and out of the church by the back gate and through the cemetery to where Niles left his coachman waiting with the horses and brougham he'd inherited from Camille; lovely lady, Mother rest her soul. Then a slash of the whip and a clatter of hooves and the town spins by in a blur and disappears altogether, and Niles is clean away with his stolen slaves.


	3. Chapter 3

Ivy wakes slowly, by degrees, feeling as if he's been asleep for a thousand years, as if everything inside his body is overgrown with decay, corroded by rust and rot. His head hurts, his stomach hurts, his lungs ache cruelly with his efforts to draw breath. He can't see anything, doesn't know whether his eyes are open, but he can feel someone's presence beside him. Very close to him, pressed warmly against his shivering skin, and he's naked and the person in bed with him is too.

“Ivy.” He recognizes the voice speaking his name, and, strangely enough, the smell of whoever it is lying next to him, and he thinks at first it's his mother; but no, the voice is wrong, and anyway she's been dead for many years now, and the scent that he breathes in, familiar as it is, isn't hers. Something astringent and medicinal, like very strong soap, mingled with tea leaves and dust and damp wool, and someone whose name he's sure he remembers is stroking his hair and crooning to him, their breath on his neck and their warm breasts tucked against his side. 

“Do you remember me? You're awake, aren't you? Do you know me?” All at once, Ivy does know, and he gasps with pain and weariness and relief and he moves with a great deal of effort, brings his head down to bury his face in the plump soft-skinned pair of tits he remembers as belonging to his mistress' good friend Niles, the one who had taken him in hand when he was a colt, who'd taught him to mount and breed mares like a proper stud. He had known nothing about mating, had never so much as stroked his own prick. He'd been frightened and uncertain, but Niles had soothed his nerves, given him a patient and thorough breaking-in. Ivy enjoyed mounting him but not as much as he enjoyed simply lying beside him in bed at night; kissing him, nuzzling him, smelling his clean sharp scent, suckling gently at his tits as he drifted off to sleep.

“Can you speak? Have you lost your voice?”

“What's wrong with him? Is he mute?” The second voice Ivy recognizes at once; it's unmistakably Dane's, and there's Dane's slim body coming to rest on his other side, Dane's sharp-pointed chin perched on his shoulder. The two of them cover Ivy like a living blanket, but somehow he's still freezing. He tries to speak but his mouth is full of dust, his throat sealed with dried blood.

“I would imagine he's in shock.”

“Why is he still so cold?”

“Don't fret. Let's none of us fret, the doctor is coming, he'll be here within the hour.” Ivy feels a brief distant stab of panic at this, tries and fails again to clear the dust and debris from his throat. He's not so ill, he doesn't need the doctor, he just needs to sleep a while longer with his head resting on Niles' pillowy tits.

“Fetch him some water, will you?”

“We can't give him water. He's unconscious.”

“No he's not. Look, his eyes are open.”

“He's delirious. Still dreaming.” Niles yawns and tucks his head under Ivy's chin, and the scent of his hair-grease is almost strong enough to be unpleasant but to Ivy it smells like his home, his mother and his mistress, his soft straw bed by the fire and everything else he'd lost so long ago, the first time he was sold.

“I think he's trying to talk.”

“It's all right. We'll wait for the doctor.” Neither Dane nor Niles seems willing to move, and Ivy can hardly keep his eyes open, so he waits. He feels strange, as if his skin is shrinking against his bones, his insides dry and poisoned; he still can't see, but he's afraid that if he drifts into unconsciousness now he won't wake up again. He gives up trying to speak, lies still with his face pressed between Niles' tits listening to the slow even beat of his heart.

When the doctor arrives, Niles and Dane leave him lying there naked on the bed, neither bodies nor blankets to cover him. He's so cold that he feels as if he's burning, his skin pricked all over with white-hot needles, his guts groaning, muscles twitching, all of him seized with the greatest bodily misery he's ever experienced in his nearly forty years of life. He finally manages a small whimper when the doctor lays hands on his body; there's the briefest feeling of relief, although he recognizes the man's voice, it's the same doctor who'd examined him when he lay disgraced in Pitt's basement laundry room. Though Ivy can't see him, he can picture him well enough; his white coat and dark trousers, his untroubled expression and bland snub-nosed face.

“He can't get out of bed,” he hears Dane saying, although to Ivy that seems more than obvious. “Don't try to move him.”

“Don't worry, don't worry.” The voice is very close to him now, the doctor's breath on his face, two fingers prying his eyelids apart. Still he can see nothing but vague lurching shapes, masses of light and shadow, as if everything were hidden from him by a thick curtain. Something cold and hard is thrust under his tongue, and he gags but manages to swallow back the bile rising in his throat.

“Water.” Someone holds a cup to his lips, and he drinks. The doctor's hands are warm on his chest, his sides, his stomach. “Help me turn him onto his side.” Two pairs of hands lift him up, while another strokes his back, at least two different voices encouraging him to vomit. He feels a sudden stinging in his bladder, realizes he needs to piss. It's painful but he's glad of it, recognizes it as the only somewhat normal feeling he's had since regaining consciousness.

Eventually, with a great deal of grunting and gesturing, he communicates his desire for a chamberpot. Someone's still stroking his back, praising him as he relieves himself, and finally he's allowed to relax and fall back against the mattress again. Someone climbs into bed beside him and pulls up the sheets and blankets. He opens his eyes, finds he can see in greater detail, an unfamiliar bedroom lit by lamps and candles and a fireplace full of glowing coals. He listens, hears Niles and the doctor talking quietly, but he can't make out much of what they're saying. It's Dane who's lying next to him, breathing softly, apparently reassured that none of them are in immediate danger.

The doctor and Niles continue their hushed conversation, and Ivy stops trying to make any sense of it. He doesn't want to hear how his body has failed him, how he's been disgraced once again by the limitations of his aging bones and organs. Dane is warm at his side, nuzzling his neck, nipping softly at the tender skin under Ivy's jawbone like he does when he wants his attention, but Ivy has nothing to give him. No strength left, no reason to continue living. He finds himself wishing once again that he had been shot after he lost his arm; no pain, no worry, just the clean swift scorch of a bullet to the head.   
The man who had owned him then would have been kinder to shoot him, or to send him back home to his mother and his mistress. Now it's too late, Camille and Cinnamon are dead and he's been left worthless. Like the carcass of an animal that's been stripped of everything useful, the bones cleaned and the hide scraped and the meat and viscera cooked and smoked and eaten. There's nothing anyone can get out of him anymore.

Ivy wakes in the night- he supposes it's night, because the room is pitch-dark-- with someone's mouth around his prick. There are wet slurping sounds, gasps of hot breath, grunts and groans of satisfaction, a smooth warm hand wrapped tight around the shaft of his cock while another weighs and squeezes his balls. Then the mouth retreats, the hand keeps stroking, a voice speaks with affection and gratitude and admiration.

“My, my. You're every bit as you were, still just as beautiful as the day I met you. Such a great strong virile beast, I remember what it was like, how glorious it was, how good it felt to take this lovely thick cock up my cunt for the first time...” Niles' mouth returns to his cock, tongue slurping and slavering vigorously, and Ivy lies as still as a dead man, still mired in shame and sorrow and self-recrimination.

“If only you knew how much I've missed you! I've thought of you every day since we parted ways, I can't imagine you've thought very often of me, but then... how young you were, you had the whole world before you, your whole life, this great span of years to be lived in luxury and pleasure. How I wish everything could have been as it was promised!

“You're awake, aren't you? There you are, my darling boy, my sweet Ivy...”

“Niles.”

“Yes, oh, there you are, you do remember me, don't you?” There's a momentary reprieve before Niles starts sucking his cock again, and Ivy moves his hips, makes a few feeble attempts to thrust into the marvelously hot mouth surrounding his cold prick, Niles' familiar mouth which is so soft and wet and eager to receive him. There's something he needs to tell Niles, something very important, but he can't remember what it is. He can't remember, doesn't know why he's so cold, why his blood feels like river-bottom mud oozing through his veins.

“The doctor,” he says, because he's fairly sure that's part of what he should be remembering, the cold metal instruments, the needles and bandages and vile-smelling fluids. The doctor had done something to him, packed some kind of compress around his left ankle and secured it with yards of linen bandage. He had been asleep, and dreaming, and then something had bitten his ankle and he'd gone on sleeping, this time without dreams.

“Yes, he was here. Not to worry, he says you'll mend all right. We've caught it in time, nothing's really damaged. You won't lose the leg, or the foot. Nothing to worry about, lovely boy, I promise you that.” Niles is kissing the base of Ivy's cock, stroking it slowly, squeezing his fingers around it like he could go on doing that all night and isn't really interested in whether Ivy comes or not. Ivy's much too weary for this sort of treatment, and with a great deal of effort he manages to pull away, to rebuff Niles' touch and roll onto his side. He closes his eyes, but he knows he can't go back to sleep. The thing he's meant to remember, whatever it is, won't let him alone.

“I'm sorry, sweet.” Niles lies down on the bed beside him, and Ivy reaches for him, gropes for his tits in the dark. He takes a nipple in his mouth, feels the absurd heat of it on his cold lips. And he remembers suckling at someone else's nipples, a pair of dainty white breasts adorned with a smattering of freckles, and someone else's appreciative gasps and groans, someone else's hands stroking and pulling at his hair.

“Charlie,” he says. Of course. That was his name, the broodmare. Ivy remembers his face, how odd it was, somber and almost homely; the coarseness of his features, the bold sharp lines of his nose and cheeks and chin. His broad shoulders and slim chest, the bony protrusions of his hips; nothing about him was soft except for his tits, two pretty little freckled handfuls that Ivy liked to nuzzle and kiss and lick and suck, to rest his head on while he slept.

“Charlie? Oh, your broodmare. Dane's told me about him, I suppose it's true that Everett sold him off just to get a rise out of you. What happened afterwards was entirely his fault, you know, you shouldn't fret about it for an instant.”

“He didn't come with us. He wasn't given to the Grand Regent.”

“The Regent... oh, that old fool, I've a bone or three to pick with him, as you can well imagine. Nearly allowing you to be murdered in his own house by his right-hand concubine, and you just know he won't punish the wicked little slut, no, Master's favorite just goes on doing whatever he pleases--”

“Noah.”

“Yes, that's the slag's name, as I recall, Little Mister Pretty Pussy, dainty and charming, most beautiful in all the kingdom... bah!” Ivy can feel Niles quaking with anger, feels his head tossed about between Niles' heaving tits like a ship on a stormy sea. With a great deal of effort he rolls over again and nestles into the pillow, feeling once again like he might vomit if he weren't so utterly and profoundly exhausted. He's satisfied enough to sleep now, manages to ignore Niles' fussing and fuming, to close his eyes and dream pleasant dreams of his broodmare.


End file.
